Alternative views of the Dorset landscape

The great appeal of landscape photography is the vast variety of subject matter and how just a few steps and a change in viewpoint, can yield two entirely different images.

This is well illustrated by the two pictures in this post. The first, is I guess, a fairly classical treatment of the rolling Dorset hills and fields of barley, taken towards the end of the day on the longest day of the year. It was the shot I had wanted to capture when I returned to this particular location just south of the village of Cheselbourne. The view is of Warren Hill as the road snakes southwards on its way to Puddletown. I used a 3 stop ND filter to slow the shutter speed down to 1/6th of a second to blur the movement in the foreground. The camera was mounted on a tripod.

Fields of barley at Warren Hill

The light was constantly changing as the clouds circled around me. There was a period when I didn’t think the sun would break through. As I waited I walked across to the other side of the road, turned to look the other way, only to see the sun on the grasses, the telegraph pole and the grey clouds behind. So very different to the first shot, but for me it still has a story to tell about the Dorset landscape. For me the telegraph pole with its insulators at the top could be trying to mimic the stems and flower heads of the cowslips below.

Telegraph pole

Two very different views of Dorset from virtually the same position and both taken within an hour of each other. It has made me think more about the type of photographs I wish to take. Both styles have their merits and personally I enjoy both of them for different reasons. The main lesson is ‘look around’ there may always be an alternative picture to be taken just over the shoulder.